I had cataract surgery early this year (2010.) I was pleased with the operations - I had both eyes done - and my sight improved. I had to pay for the surgery privately as the National Health Service told me I'd have to wait two years. At my time of life, two years is too long. When you see some of the things the NHS spends its money on it does make you wonder why people in their 80s who've paid taxes and national insurance for decades can't get two simple eye operations when they need them.
Anyway, my sight did improve for a while. I'm 81 though and there's only so much an eye surgeon can do with weary old eyes. Throughout this year my sight has got steadily worse as a result of age-related macular degeneration (the one that can't be cured.) I was referred to an eye clinic and then a pleasant women came to my home to advise me about lighting and other things that might help. I was sent two pairs of hi-tech glasses - one pair for looking at the television and objects further away and one pair for reading. All my life I've loved reading and writing so the fact that they're both getting hard to do is quite difficult to accept. Being told to stop driving was difficult but at least I could still watch films fairly easily, read books, send and receive emails and write this. At least on the computer you can switch the text to large size which is a help.
Yesterday, another woman called round and she gave me a fold-up white stick. It was my fault really because I'd told her that sometimes when I cross a road I have trouble seeing if there's a car coming. Out came the white stick and she advised me to keep it in my handbag so it's always handy if I go into town. I don't like having a white stick in my possession - it makes me feel sort of pigeonholed as an invalid - but I'll just have to get used to it. I've been registered as partially sighted too so there's no getting away from the fact that my sight is not as good as it was up until a couple of years ago. Blindness is a terrible thought for anyone who takes their good eyesight for granted but it's pretty worrying when you find your sight actually progressively failing. You have no way of knowing how fast it'll deteriorate or if you'll hang on to at least a measure of sight.
The woman who came this week also told me I can apply for an Attendance Allowance. It wasn't really clear to me what that means or whether it's for partially sighted people or people with any disability but I think it's to help a bit with things like taxis because I can't drive any more. Or perhaps to have someone come and help me with my shopping because the writing's often so tiny on products that I can't always see what I'm buying. I feel a bit daft asking some young person in Sainsburys to look at a packet and tell me what's in it! Anyway, I suppose someone will explain how I apply for the allowance and what exactly it's to be used for.
One of my daughters has advised me to start getting used to radio and talking books as much as the TV, newspapers and proper books. I suppose that's not a bad idea. I like to see the news on TV and I've always liked spending Sunday reading all the Sunday papers, usually lying on the carpet with them spread out all around me. But it's probably time to make a bit of a transition and get used to hearing the news on the radio.
There's not to recommend about getting older really. I don't know about getting wiser but you certainly start to get a bit worn and creaky after 80. Some chap, I can't remember who it was offhand, said real old age starts at 80. I'll be 82 in September 2011. So far, I tend to agree with him. One of the clichés about ageing is that it's not for softies. I certainly agree with that. Another is that getting old is better than the alternative. For now, I agree with that too!
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est disability. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est disability. Afficher tous les articles
jeudi 16 décembre 2010
lundi 8 novembre 2010
Disabled Children Born in the 1920s - My Baby Brother's Fate
I was born in 1929 and was brought up as an only child. But I wasn't the only child my parents had. A few years before I was born, my mother gave birth to a little boy.
My brother was born at home in Kirkham in Lancashire, just as I would be. But whereas I was healthy, he was not. He was a very sick baby. My father told me years later that he had a hole in his back - a sort of wound that was unhealed. Although I can't be sure, I think he must have had spina bifida.
I don't know what the treatment is these days for a baby with spina bifida. It's not a condition I know much about. But in those days, it was often thought best that a very sick or disabled baby was left to die. Or - who knows - even "helped" to die. I think that is what happened with my brother. My father told me many years later that our doctor said just after the birth that the baby would only live for about a week. Obviously it was terribly upsetting for my parents. Their first child...
My father arranged straight away to have his son christened. We were catholics and in those days we believed without even really thinking about it that an unchristened baby who died would go to limbo and spend eternity there. (What a terrible thing for a religion to tell parents facing the death of a child.) Anyway, my brother was christened. The priest came to the house for the baptism and the sick baby was given the name William.
Each day that week William lay in his cradle and each evening my father administered a medicine to him. He was told by the doctor to fetch the medicine from the chemist each evening. When my father eventually talked about the death of my brother, when I was an adult, he told me that the doctor had never explained what the medicine was or what it was for but my dad noticed that each evening after he had the medicine, William was worse. At the end of the week, he died.
My father told me that it hadn't even occurred to him to question the doctor's orders - in those days the doctor, like the priest, was a bit like God - you didn't question them and you certainly didn't challenge them. It didn't even cross your mind. However, looking back, my father said he'd often - naturally - thought about his sick baby boy and had concluded that, whatever the doctor had ordered, it had probably killed William.
He could never know for sure and I will never know. My mother had died by the time my father talked to me about this. I don't know if he had ever shared his opinion with her. Probably not. She was ill most of her adult life with pernicious anaemia and he probably would have thought she wasn't strong enough to talk about losing the baby.
My dad was of course a man of his time and when he talked about William and his death he talked about it simply and objectively. He just said that he thought the doctor had probably told him to administer a 'medicine' that had killed the baby. He didn't say he thought that was terrible, or for the best, or anything else - just that he thought that was what had happened. I'll never know if he was inwardly angry at the doctor or calmly accepting that a medical judgement had been made or even reassured by the belief that William had been spared a long life of pain and disability.
I suspect, because it was back in the 1920s, that he may simply have thought that's how life was and that was the professional decision taken by the doctor. It makes me shiver though to think that my kind dad may have spent that week trustingly giving 'medicine' to his sick baby son in the hope it would improve his condition, if in fact it was killing him.
My brother was born at home in Kirkham in Lancashire, just as I would be. But whereas I was healthy, he was not. He was a very sick baby. My father told me years later that he had a hole in his back - a sort of wound that was unhealed. Although I can't be sure, I think he must have had spina bifida.
I don't know what the treatment is these days for a baby with spina bifida. It's not a condition I know much about. But in those days, it was often thought best that a very sick or disabled baby was left to die. Or - who knows - even "helped" to die. I think that is what happened with my brother. My father told me many years later that our doctor said just after the birth that the baby would only live for about a week. Obviously it was terribly upsetting for my parents. Their first child...
My father arranged straight away to have his son christened. We were catholics and in those days we believed without even really thinking about it that an unchristened baby who died would go to limbo and spend eternity there. (What a terrible thing for a religion to tell parents facing the death of a child.) Anyway, my brother was christened. The priest came to the house for the baptism and the sick baby was given the name William.
Each day that week William lay in his cradle and each evening my father administered a medicine to him. He was told by the doctor to fetch the medicine from the chemist each evening. When my father eventually talked about the death of my brother, when I was an adult, he told me that the doctor had never explained what the medicine was or what it was for but my dad noticed that each evening after he had the medicine, William was worse. At the end of the week, he died.
My father told me that it hadn't even occurred to him to question the doctor's orders - in those days the doctor, like the priest, was a bit like God - you didn't question them and you certainly didn't challenge them. It didn't even cross your mind. However, looking back, my father said he'd often - naturally - thought about his sick baby boy and had concluded that, whatever the doctor had ordered, it had probably killed William.
He could never know for sure and I will never know. My mother had died by the time my father talked to me about this. I don't know if he had ever shared his opinion with her. Probably not. She was ill most of her adult life with pernicious anaemia and he probably would have thought she wasn't strong enough to talk about losing the baby.
My dad was of course a man of his time and when he talked about William and his death he talked about it simply and objectively. He just said that he thought the doctor had probably told him to administer a 'medicine' that had killed the baby. He didn't say he thought that was terrible, or for the best, or anything else - just that he thought that was what had happened. I'll never know if he was inwardly angry at the doctor or calmly accepting that a medical judgement had been made or even reassured by the belief that William had been spared a long life of pain and disability.
I suspect, because it was back in the 1920s, that he may simply have thought that's how life was and that was the professional decision taken by the doctor. It makes me shiver though to think that my kind dad may have spent that week trustingly giving 'medicine' to his sick baby son in the hope it would improve his condition, if in fact it was killing him.
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